Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN!
Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2018.

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Tuesday, May 30, 2017

My Ethnicity Analysis From MyHeritage DNA

I posted MyHeritage Launches New Comprehensive DNA Ethnicity Analysis today, so I went into my MyHeritage account, clicked on the DNA tab and "Ethnicity Estimate" is now at the top of the list (it wasn't before, since I uploaded my raw autosomal DNA data rather than take another test with MyHeritage). Here is what I saw as my Ethnicity Estimate:

That's interesting! Central America? That's the first indication I have from all of the DNA tests I've taken or had analyzed. 1.1% indicates like a 4th great-grandparent or two 5th great-grandparents, right?

There is a link below the map above that says "Show events from your family tree." I clicked on it, and zoomed into the European part of the map, and saw numbers in red circles for countries on the map:

If I click on one of the numbers in the red circles, I can see a list of events (births, marriages, deaths) for persons that occurred in the countries noted. I clicked on the "47" circle in Germany in the screen below:

Note that the red circles are for specific "countries" and not an indicator of a specific place in those countries.

I was curious about the "Central America" place, so I clicked on the link for Central America and below the map a description of the population origins and the migration patterns into and out of the region was provided:

For Central America, a red circle appeared in Guyana with the number 6. I clicked on that circle and saw the list of the 6 events - they were all for my pre-1664 New York ancestors. I looked in the family tree for them, and noted that they all have an event place of "New Amsterdam." I wonder if Guyana has a place with that name? I would guess that they do. If I change the Event place, will red circle with the number go away? Will my ethnicity change (I doubt it!).

I will compare, in another post, the MyHeritageDNA ethnicity estimate to the estimates from the other DNA providers and analyzers (AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, 23andMe, GEDMatch, LivingDNA and DNA.Land) who have analyzed my DNA.

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Disclosure: I receive a complimentary subscription to MyHeritage, and gave received other material consideration in past years. I uploaded my autosomal DNA raw data to their DNA product. This does not affect my objective analysis of MyHeritage products.

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Hi Randy, just to confirm, the family tree does not influence or modify the ethnicity results. Once the DNA informs the creation of ethnicity results we check the user's tree to see if we can corroborate the ethnicity results with information from the user's own tree about their ancestors. Guyana, does indeed have a large city named "New Amsterdam" and if your ancestors appear in your family tree without a country listed, but tagged as "New Amsterdam", and you have DNA from a region which includes a place called "New Amsterdam" then it would appear that this is what has caused the issue. Hope that clarifies things.

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About Me

I am a native San Diegan, a graduate of San Diego State University, a retired aerospace engineer, a genealogist and a family guy.
My wife (Angel Linda) and I have two lovely daughters, and five darling grandchildren. We love to visit them and have them visit us.
Angel Linda and I love to travel to visit friends and relatives, to sightsee, to cruise or to do genealogy. Our travels have taken us all over the USA, to England, Down Under and Scandinavia.
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